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Baron Julius von Brunk
Baron Julius von Brunk (born ) is an American graphic designer and photographer in New York City. He's mainly known on social media for being a master LEGO builder, but he also has a small presence on YouTube for showcasing his LEGO creations. His channel originally was meant to serve as a place to demonstrate his electronic LEGO creations, however as of 2018 he's been creating more videos and animations to expand his channel. Brunk has stated on Twitter and Facebook that he wants to focus more on stop-motion animations; he created a few brickfilm shorts since 2019. Currently on his Instagram and Flickr, he posts behind the scenes photos of his animations for those aforementioned fandoms. Biography Julius Alexander von Brunk was born in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, as a middle child of a working-class family. After working in blue collar jobs and doing freelance graphics in his early adult years, in 2010 he migrated to the New York City metro area and began a successful career as a graphic artist. His specialties as a designer include package layout artwork, product photography, vector designs, photo editing, and apparel design. His notable jobs and career highlights consisted of designing packaging for small electronics, creating t-shirt designs for professional sports teams, working with licensed property for designing accessories, and specializing with financial presentation graphics for major investment banks. Early Internet Career In the early 2000s, Brunk was an active and popular member of the G4TV discussion forums, often stirring up controversy with his rants and debates in the Off Topic section. In 2005 he shifted his attention at creating simple Flash animations for Newgrounds.com. During 2006-2007, he mainly created several animated shorts containing an exaggerated version of his real life self having violent encounters with video game characters such as Sephiroth and Shao Kahn. Brunk took an indefinite hiatus from Newgrounds around 2010 when he moved to New York City to pursue a career in digital arts. Personal Life Brunk is also an avid toy collector, animator, and photographer; he shoots photos and videos of LEGO creations as a hobby. These particular works have been often showcased in various media, notably video game publications, technology websites, and international arts/culture magazines. Brunk's ancestry includes German, French, Spanish, French-Canadian, Native American/Canadian First Nations, and Romani Gypsy. He unofficially added "von" onto his last name when he learned from his grandfather that their actual family name was "von Brunk" in Prussia, prior to arrival in the United States in the 19th century. Although "Julius Brunk" is his legal name, he uses "Julius von Brunk" in film credits and in media, to highlight his noble German heritage. YouTube Channel Brunk is noted by his unusual way of speaking, which people compare to Hunter S. Thompson. He talks with a distinct Central Pennsylvania dialect and tends to overuse words like "various" and "incorporated" in his videos. His videos usually contain the song "The Thunderer March" by John Philip Sousa as the opening title theme, and the remainder of the videos use 8-bit chiptune remixes of assorted songs throughout the duration. Brunk introduces himself as "TV's Baron von Brunk", which according to his website, he states this is a "remnant artifact" of his Newgrounds Flash animation days when his online persona was that of a fictional local celebrity. This persona is based on some reality: in his early internet days, Brunk and his website had a cult following in his small hometown in Lancaster, PA, where his Flash animations and website gained notoriety. Because of this small amount of fame in his hometown, Brunk jokingly refers to himself as "world famous in Lancaster", hence the tongue-in-cheek moniker of "TV's Baron von Brunk." Brunk's main images/avatars on social media consist of a custom 1:1 LEGO sculpture of his own head, which contains simple electronic components to allow the eyes to glow. Electronic LEGO Models In earlier 2012, Brunk constructed and released a large model of a Super Mario Bros. 3 airship, which went viral and was published in Nintendo Power. This LEGO model used a crude circuit of wires, batteries, and a light bulb to allow a stained glass window of a Super Mario Bros. sprite to illuminate on the deck of the ship. After releasing this model, Brunk went on to incorporate electronics into his subsuquent LEGO creations from 2013 onwards. At the start of 2013, Brunk constructed and released a giant sculpture of an NES controller which was built to play games using the circuit board from a real NES controller wired into a series of push buttons. This controller gained notoriety from Nintendo of America, and led Brunk to unveiling a display at Nintendo World Store to promote the launch of LEGO City: Undercover for Wii U in 2013. Following the success of his giant NES controller, Brunk began to experiment with adding more sophisticated electronic circuits into his LEGO creations. Initially, these electronic models simply added lamp bases and cords to allow the mosaic designs to glow with light bulbs. Eventually these designs went from simple to elaborate: some of which would contained microchips for playing sound. From the start of 2014 through 2015, he created the following elaborate electronic LEGO models which use components such as lamp bases, homemade circuit boards, Arduino codes, and microcontrollers: *'Traffic Signal Lamp' (built in 2013, video launched in 2019). *'Legend of Zelda Spiritual Stone Lamp '(built in 2014, video launched in 2018). *'DL-44 Blaster Pistol '- there were two versions of this creation: the first used a hacked Radio Shack sound recorder, and the other contained a homemade circuit with an Arduino code. The Blaster in the video is the 2nd version which was built in the summer of 2014. *Musical Super Mario Bros. Sprites: Starmen, Mushrooms, and Dry Bones *'Mosaic Luigi Sprite Portrait' *'Musical Mega Man Sprite' In the fall of 2015, Brunk rebuilt his giant NES controller into a new Mk.II edition which used a new electronic circuit with an Arduino Micro, and thus could not play games on an actual NES but rather PC only. This controller was unveiled at A Video Game Convention in Parsippany, NJ in September 2015. LEGOformer Mashups In early 2012, Brunk released two original LEGO creations called Domaster and Plasmashock, which were mashups of video game consoles/accessories and Transformers. These were published in Nintendo Power in spring of that year, and Brunk went on to create several more similar creations in subsequent years; many of which were featured in printed and online publications such as Official Nintendo Magazine (U.K.), Gizmodo, BrickJournal. These following models have quick stop-motion animated demos on YouTube: *'Ultra Hexacon' - Nintendo 64 (built in 2013, video released in 2018) *'Vantage' - Game Boy Advance (built in 2014, video released in 2018) *'Prismatis' - Game Boy Color (built and released in 2017) LEGO Brickfilm Animations Brunk's stop-motion animated LEGO brickfilms are unique in that they contain wonky bobble head puppets blended with live-action footage. He began experimenting with this art form in 2017 with his Alice in Wonderland project, but expanded it greatly during 2019. *'Brick to the Future' *'State of the YouTube Podcast Promo' (a parody with puppets of EmpLemon, Rusty Cage, and Mumkey Jones) *'Legend of Zelda Cereal Parody '(with Turkey Tom and Rusty Cage as voice actors) *'Shrek Eats 2,000 Chicken Nuggets' *'Bort Sampson' *Electric Warrior Porygon (coming soon) *Baron von Brunk's Alice: A LEGO Adventure in Wonderland (coming soon) Lost Subway Commercial In early 2019, Brunk released a small documentary about his search for an obscure Subway sandwiches commercial from the 1990s. In his video, he accompanied his search with a reenactment of the commercial using LEGO puppets and stop-motion footage. After sharing this video on Reddit, multiple users chimed in to claimed to have seen the commercial, but so far no record of the actual commercial has surfaced. Images HeyArnold_BTS(medium).jpg|Baron von Brunk in 2018, behind the scenes of a LEGO tutorial video. VGC01.jpg|Baron von Brunk and Billy Mitchell at a Video Game Convention in 2015. Hex-Tetra-2018(small).jpg|LEGO Nintendo 64 Transformers (Ultra Hexacon and Tetragon) by Julius von Brunk. JuliusMushrooms.jpg|Baron von Brunk in 2015, demonstrating his electronic Super Mario Bros. sprites. NES06.jpg|Julius von Brunk playing his Giant LEGO NES Controller Mk.II edition. L10.jpg|Electronic Luigi Portrait Category:YouTube Artists Category:Male YouTubers Category:American YouTubers Category:YouTube Animators Category:Users that joined in 2010